By Angelica Melara
Guardian Angels, a thrift store and non-profit organization in Glen Head, NY that is owned and operated by Barbara Costello, is one of 1.5 million 501c3 organizations that can be found in the United States. Guardian Angels is dedicated to helping members of the community with whatever they may need help.
The thrift store opened in 2008 with the mission of selling used children’s clothing, and in 2009 the store moved to a larger location and had a larger variety of clothing. The store is flooded each day with donations from people in the community and with donations from different stores in the community. Costello rents out the apartment above the store to single mothers in need.
“Right now there is a girl living there with her two children and her mother from Russia is flying out to help her with the kids,” Costello said.
This woman was not the first and is not the last one to use the apartment Costello has offered her.
“Before her, we had two girls who each had a kid. Before that there was another mother that was staying there with daughter and, well, it’s kind of a sad story,” Costello said. “She was a drug addict, and I would babysit the daughter whenever she needed me to, but one day she overdosed and this little girl was left all alone. Thankfully one of the other women that worked with me and knew the girl adopted her so it’s not like we left her by herself.”
Costello explained that she rents out the upstairs apartment to whomever needs it because she understands that sometimes people need that much help.
“Although people in need sometimes don’t want to admit they need help when they do, it’s important to have things like shelter and clothing readily available,” Costello said.
The store has many volunteers that help when it comes to setting up for raffles, or simply just getting the store opened in the mornings. The raffles are held every couple of months and include people buying raffle tickets. All of the money that is earned from the raffles is used to cover the costs of maintaining the store and the upstairs apartment.
One of these volunteers is Erica Goldstein, a senior at the State University of Plattsburgh, who is finishing the spring 2021 semester from her home on Long Island.
“Barbara is one of the most giving individuals I’ve ever met,” Goldstein said. “Hearing her story and why she opened up the shop is just so inspiring.”
Goldstein has only volunteered at the store a handful of times but had nothing but good words to say about Costello, the store and the mission.
“She told me and one of the other girls that was volunteering there about the work she does in Honduras,” Goldstein said. “Hearing how she’s worked so hard to help literally everyone around her, and how she has so much drive to do the things she does is just so cool.”
Costello takes trips to Honduras about every four months because of what she calls “The Honduras Project.”
The Honduras Project was formed for volunteers to go to Comayagua, Honduras to help with donations to a hospital and a school. The mission for those who assist Costello on each trip is to help the children and mothers in need. The mothers are able to continue their education while the children are in a daycare that provides them a safe environment to grow their physical, emotional and cognitive development.
“We visit the mothers and children in the mountains,” Costello said. “We have to set up good relationships with the people that live in the mountains in Honduras because we don’t want them to think we are just invading their space.”
Costello and the other volunteers make their way to the women in the mountains to teach them things like sewing and cooking to help them in their everyday lives. Having the surplus of volunteers that come from different backgrounds and have studied different things in school also shows the women that having children is not the only thing their lives have to be.
“It’s its own little community up there, and there are girls that are young teenagers that are having babies. With some of them they are already living the lives they want to live, but what if there is just one girl that doesn’t want to spend her life only being a mother?” Costello said.
There are places in the United States that are made for helping whoever is in need, but each community should have something like Guardian Angels. It is important to help those around us who are not as fortunate as some people are. People like Costello are the people that help inspire others in wanting to help people around them.
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